The present invention relates to an in-car computing system comprising a computer unit, a display screen for displaying information, a cursor and option menus with individual option menu items, and a control element for moving said cursor on the display screen two-dimensionally and for selecting option menu items. The present invention also relates to a method of controlling a cursor for an in-car computing device comprising a display screen for displaying information, option menu items and a cursor, and a control element for moving said cursor and for selecting an option menu.
In-car computing devices of the afore-mentioned kind are known in the art. More and more, such in-car computing devices are built into modern vehicles. The operation and control of such devices is usually achieved by a central control element, for example in form of a rotary switch button, which allows not only the selection of certain menu items but also the input of data, for example cities and streets, into a navigation system. In addition to an alphanumeric input, there is an alternative possibility with navigation systems to select the destination on a map displayed on a display screen by moving the cursor on the destination. Since the mentioned rotary switch button only allows a movement of the cursor in one direction, the input of the destination has to be carried out in two steps which makes this alternative type of input complicated. More appropriate are control elements which allow a movement of the cursor in two dimensions simultaneously. This kind of control elements, for example, comprises crossed rocker switches, sliding controllers being slidable in x and y directions and a joystick-like control element.
Although the selection of the destination on the map is possible with such control elements, the operation is not very ergonomic due to outer influences within a vehicle. Particularly it is difficult for a user to move the cursor on streets displayed on the screen (only streets are useful destinations).
Similar ergonomic problems also arise with other applications which require a free two-dimensional movement of the cursor for selecting any function. For example, such a function is an Internet function which allows to select randomly distributed hyperlinks by moving the cursor on the respective hyper-link. Such an input into an in-car computing device necessarily requires an eye-hand-coordination in addition, since the user is otherwise not able to recognize whether the desired location on the display screen has been reached by the cursor. Also, this fact may be improved under ergonomic considerations.
Ergonomic aspects relating to standard personal computers have been discussed in DE 199 07 620 A1, DE 198 58 647 A1 or DE 44 00 790 A1, for example.